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Spain
The Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España) is a highly developed, stable, democratic nation located in Southern Europe, with three exclaves in North Africa and adjacent archipelagos in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The Spanish mainland is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the south and east, by the Cantabric Sea that includes the Bay of Biscay to the north, and by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal to the west. Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean; Cuba in the Caribbean Sea; the Canary Islands off the African coast; and Ceuta, Melilla, Spanish Sahara, and Spanish Guinea on the African continent. Spain is a constitutional monarchy and a developed nation with one of the largest economies in the world. History Prehistory and pre-Roman peoples in the Iberian Peninsula Modern humans in the form of Cro-Magnons began arriving in the Iberian Peninsula from the Pyrenees some 35,000 years ago. The best known artifacts of these prehistoric human settlements are the famous paintings in the Altamira cave of Cantabria in northern Spain, which were created about 15,000 BC. New archeological research at Atapuerca indicates that the Iberian Peninsula was peopled more than a million years ago. The two main historical peoples of the peninsula were the Iberians and the Celts, the former inhabiting the Mediterranean side from the northeast to the southwest, the latter inhabiting the Atlantic side, in the north and northwest part of the peninsula. In the inner part of the peninsula, where both groups were in contact, a mixed, distinctive, culture was present, known as Celtiberian. Different names of places witness their geographical distribution. Celts founded cities such as Coimbra, Braga, and Segovia. The Iberians gave their name to Spain's longest river Ebro (or "Iberian rivier"). In addition, Basques, sometimes considered part of the Iberians occupied the western area of the Pyrenees mountains although they must have extended southwards in light of some geographical names that attest their presence as far south as Aranjuez a name that originates in the Basque words aran zuri ("valley of thorns"). Other ethnic groups existed along the southern coastal areas of present day Andalusia. Among these southern groups there grew the earliest urban culture in the Iberian Peninsula, that of the semi-mythical southern city of Tartessos (perhaps pre-1100 BC) near the location of present-day Cádiz. The flourishing trade in gold and silver between the people of Tartessos and Phoenicians and Greeks is documented in the history of Strabo and in the biblical book of Solomon. Between about 500 BC and 300 BC, the seafaring Phoenicians, and Greeks founded trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast. These colonies include present-day cities like Ampurias (from the Greek word 'emporion'), Malaga (from the Greek word 'malaka'), and the city of Alicante, originally named in Greek Akra Leuka (ie, white bay). Phoenicians from the African city of Carthage known as Carthaginians, briefly took control of much of the Mediterranean coast in the course of the Punic Wars until they were eventually defeated and replaced by the Romans. Cartaginians created important cities in the Mediterranean litoral, including 'Cartago nova' or 'New Carthage' (present-day Cartagena) and a city in the northeast named founded by Hannibal's father Hamilcar Barca. Hamilcar named the city Barcino, after his family; the city is present day Barcelona. Roman Empire and Germanic invasions During the Second Punic War, an expanding Roman Empire captured Carthaginian trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast (from roughly 210 BC to 205 BC), leading to eventual Roman control of nearly the entire Iberian Peninsula – a control which lasted over 500 years, bound together by law, language, and the Roman road. The base Celt and Iberian population remained in various stages of romanisation, and local leaders were admitted into the Roman aristocratic class. The Romans improved existing cities, such as Lisbon (Olissis bona or 'good for Ulysses') and Tarragona (Tarraco), and established Zaragoza (Caesaraugusta), Mérida (Augusta Emerita), Valencia (Valentia), León ("Legio Septima"), Badajoz ("Pax Augusta").7 The peninsula's economy expanded under Roman tutelage. Hispania served as a granary for the Roman market, and its harbors exported gold, wool, olive oil, and wine. Agricultural production increased with the introduction of irrigation projects, some of which remain in use. Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Theodosius I, and the philosopher Seneca were born in Hispania. Christianity was introduced into Hispania in the first century CE and it became popular in the cities in the second century CE. Most of Spain's present languages and religion, and the basis of its laws, originate from this period. The first Barbarians to invade Hispania arrived in the 5th century, as the Roman empire decayed. The Visigoths, Suebi, Vandals and Alans arrived in Spain by crossing the Pyrenees mountain range. The romanised Visigoths entered Hispania in 415, and, after the conversion of their monarchy to Roman Catholicism, the Visigothic Kingdom eventually encompassed great part of the Iberian Peninsula. Muslim Iberia In the 8th century, nearly all the Iberian peninsula was quickly conquered (711–718) by mainly Berber Muslims (see Moors) from North Africa. These conquests were part of the expansion of the Islamic Umayyad Empire. Only three small areas in the mountains of northern Spain managed to cling to their independence, Asturias, Navarra and Aragon. Under Islam, Christians and Jews were recognised as "peoples of the book", and were free to practice their religion, but faced some discriminations. Conversion to Islam proceeded at a steadily increasing pace, starting with the aristocracy, as it offered an escape from the limitations and humiliations of their dhimmi status. With mass conversions in the 10th and 11th centuries Muslims are believed to have come to outnumber Christians in Al-Andalus. The Muslim community in Spain was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. The Berber people of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the invading armies, clashed with the Arab leadership from the Middle East. Over time, large Moorish populations became established, especially in the Guadalquivir River valley, the coastal plain of Valencia, and (towards the end of this period) in the mountainous region of Granada. Cordoba, Muslim Spain's capital, was the largest, richest and most sophisticated city of medieval Europe.13 Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim and Jewish scholars played a great part in reviving and expanding classical Greek learning in Western Europe. Spain's romanised cultures interacted with Muslim and Jewish cultures in complex ways, thus giving Spain a distinctive culture.11 Outside the cities, the land ownership system from Roman times remained largely intact as Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners, and new crops and techniques led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture. However, by the 11th century, Muslim holdings had fractured into rival Taifa kingdoms.11 The arrival of the North African Muslim ruling empires of the Almoravids and the Almohads restored unity upon Muslim holdings, with a stricter, less tolerant application of Islam, but ultimately, after some initial successes in invading the north, proved unable to resist the increasing military strength of the Christian states. Fall of Muslim rule and unification The term Reconquista ("Reconquest") is used to describe the centuries-long period of expansion of Spain's Christian kingdoms; the Reconquista is viewed as beginning after the battle of Covadonga in in 722. The Christian army victory over the Muslim forces lead to the creation of the Christian Kingdom of Asturias. Muslim armies had also moved north of the Pyrenees, but they were defeated at the battle of Poitiers in France. Subsequently, they retreated to more secure positions south of the Pyrenees with a frontier marked by the Ebro and Duero rivers in Spain. In the following years Christian armies moved to occupy and colonized the vacant areas. As early as 739, Muslim forces left Galicia, which was to host one of medieval Christianity's holiest sites, Santiago de Compostela. A little later Frankish forces established Christian counties south of the Pyrenees; these areas were to grow into kingdoms, in the north-east and the western part of the Pyrenees. These territories included Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia. The breakup of Al-Andalus into the competing Taifa kingdoms helped the expanding Christian kingdoms, namely Castille that will be the main driving force in the Reconquista. The capture of the central city of Toledo in 1085 largely completed the reconquest of the northern half of Spain. Also in the 13th century, the kingdom of Aragón expanded its reach across the Mediterranean to Sicily. In 1469, the crowns of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragón were united by the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand. In 1478 began the final stage of the conquest of Canary Islands and in 1492, these united kingdoms captured Granada, ending the last remnant of a 781-year presence of Islamic rule on the Iberian Peninsula. The year 1492 also marked the arrival in the New World of Christopher Columbus, during a voyage funded by Isabella. That same year, Spain's large Jewish community was expelled during the Spanish Inquisition. As Renaissance New Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand centralised royal power at the expense of local nobility, and the word España began to be used to designate the whole of the two kingdoms. With their wide-ranging political, legal, religious and military reforms, Spain emerged as a world great power. From the Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century The unification of the kingdoms of Aragón, Castile, León, and Navarre laid the basis for modern Spain and the Spanish Empire. Spain became Europe's leading power throughout the 16th century and most of the 17th century, a position reinforced by trade and wealth from colonial possessions. Spain reached its apogee during the reigns of the first two Spanish Habsburgs (Charles I (1516-1556) and Philip II (1556-1598)). Included in this period are the last Italian Wars, the Dutch revolt, clashes with the Ottomans, the Anglo-Spanish war and war with France. The Spanish Empire expanded to include nearly all of South and Central America, Mexico, southern and western portions of today's United States, the Philippines, Guam and the Mariana Islands in Eastern Asia, the Iberian peninsula (including the Portuguese empire (from 1580)), southern Italy, Sicily, cities in Northern Africa, as well as parts of modern Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was the first empire about which it was said that the sun did not set. This was an age of discovery, with daring explorations by sea and by land, the opening up of new trade routes across oceans, conquests and the beginning of European colonialism. Along with the arrival of precious metals, spices, luxuries, and new agricultural plants, Spanish explorers and others brought back knowledge that transformed the European understanding of the world. Of note was the cultural efflorescence now known as the Spanish Golden Age and the intellectual movement known as the School of Salamanca. In the 16th and 17th centuries Spain was confronted by unrelenting challenges from all sides. In the early 16th century Barbary pirates under the aegis of the rapidly growing Ottoman empire, disrupted life in many coastal areas through their slave raids and renewed the threat of an Islamic invasion. This at a time when Spain was often at war with France in Italy and elsewhere. Later the Protestant Reformation schism from the Catholic Church dragged the kingdom ever more into the mire of religiously charged wars. The result was a country forced into ever expanding military efforts across Europe and in the Mediterranean. By the middle decades of a war-ridden mid-17th century Europe, the effects of the strain began to show. The Spanish Habsburgs had enmeshed the country in the continent wide religious-political conflicts. These conflicts drained it of resources and undermined the European economy generally. Spain managed to hold on to the majority of the scattered Habsburg empire, and help the Imperial forces of the Holy Roman Empire reverse a large part of the advances made by Protestant forces, but it was finally forced to recognise the independence of Portugal - with its empire - and the Netherlands, and eventually began to surrender territories to France after the immensely destructive, Europe-wide Thirty Years War. From the 1640s Spain went into a gradual but seemingly irreversible decline for the remainder of the century, however it was able to maintain and enlarge its vast overseas empire which remained intact until the 19th century. Controversy over succession to the throne consumed the first years of the 18th century. The War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), a wide ranging international conflict combined with a civil war, cost Spain its European possessions and its position as one of the leading powers on the Continent (although it retained its overseas territories). During this war, a new dynasty—the French Bourbons—was installed. Long united only by the Crown, a true Spanish state was established when the first Bourbon king Philip V of Spain united Castile and Aragon into a single state, abolishing many of the regional privileges (fueros). The 18th century saw a gradual recovery and some increase in prosperity through much of the empire. The new Bourbon monarchy drew on the French system of modernising the administration and the economy. Enlightenment ideas began to gain ground among some of the kingdom's elite and monarchy. Towards the end of the century trade finally began growing strongly. Military assistance for the rebellious British colonies in the American War of Independence improved Spain's international standing. Napoleonic rule and its consequences In 1793, Spain went to war against the new French Republic, which had overthrown and executed its Bourbon king, Louis XVI. The war polarised the country in an apparent reaction against the gallicised elites. Defeated in the field, Spain made peace with France in 1795 and effectively became a client state of that country; the following year, it declared war against Britain and Portugal. A disastrous economic situation, along with other factors, led to the abdication of the Spanish king in favour of Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte. This new foreign monarch was regarded with scorn. On May 2, 1808, the people of Madrid began a nationalist uprising against the French army, marking the beginning of what is known to the Spanish as the War of Independence, and to the English as the Peninsular War. Napoleon was forced to intervene personally, defeating the Spanish army and Anglo-Portuguese forces. However, further military action by Spanish guerrillas and Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army, combined with Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, led to the ousting of the French from Spain in 1814, and the return of King Ferdinand VII. The French invasion proved disastrous for Spain's economy, and left a deeply divided country that was prone to political instability for more than a century. The power struggles of the early 19th century led to the loss of all of Spain's colonies in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Spanish-American War Amid the instability and economic crisis that afflicted Spain in the 19th century there arose nationalist movements in the Philippines and Cuba. Wars of independence ensued in those colonies and eventually the United States became involved. Although Spanish military units quickly won respect from American soldiers for their bravery and skill, the Spanish-American war of 1898 was so badly mismanaged by the highest levels of command and government that it was soon over. "El Desastre", as the war became known in Spain, helped give impetus to the Generation of 98 who conducted much critical analysis concerning Spain. It also weakened the stability that had been established during Alfonso XII's reign. to be continued Image:Map of Portugal.PNG Category:Nations